Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers

From the death of Elizabeth I to the accession of a Parliamentary monarch, the seventeenth century was diffused with radicalism and revolution; the constitutional crises which punctuate the period are episodes familiar enough in the evolution of ‘modern’ government, but there were parallel, and less obvious, developments in other spheres—intellectual, economic, scientific, religious—wherever traditional ideals proved unable to withstand criticism and innovation. In politics, the control and high-handedness which the Tudors, with some justification, conceived of as paternalism had already come under attack; resentment at royal tutelage had resulted in feuds between Elizabeth and her House of Commons and, where she had side-stepped or retreated, the Stuarts were to press on, diminishing the subject’s confidence in the Crown and heightening tension to the very point of revolution.